I was walking on 16th St in Denver at noon and saw that there were a lot more people on the street than there had been a few minutes before; all walking in the same direction, fast, reporters with TV crews. And cops, and then down Larimer we could see an entourage of black SUVs with flashing lights waiting. "Something's going on!"

So we followed the reporters, pushed our way to the front of the crowd, and asked what's going on, they said "Joe Biden." There were members of his press pool nearby. I asked how long there had been a press pool for Biden, and was told this was the first first event, in fact it was his first public appearance since being chosen by Obama as his runninng mate.

A huge crowd gathered -- a few minutes later there was a rush of energy and there he was. I held my camera over my head and snapped picture after picture, a few movies. I didn't get to shake his hand, but I did take in the scene. It was really hot. A lot of excitement and enthusiasm for the guy. He cracked a few jokes about how hungry he was and he was looking forward to the BBQ and walked up to the stand and ordered something. There was even a press crew inside the stand! The place was absolutely crrawling with reporters and cameras.

After a while we found a quiet place to upload a picture and a movie, probably the first pictures of the event to make it out of Denver (assuming there wasn't any live coverage).

It was pure luck that we happened to cross paths with Biden's entourage. If we had headed out for lunch just a few minutes earlier we wouldn't have.

Evening pictures

I walked through a door I shouldn't have and all of a sudden I'm walking around among all these famous politiicans and news people. Only got a good picture of John Kerry, and a movie of Sean Hannity and a movie of John Kerry.

I'm sitting in the nosebleeds at Pepsi waiting for Jimmy Carter to speak, and then FriendFeed releases its new beta. Good timing! Gives me something to do while the speakers go on and on and...

Not sure what to do with the sub-lists feature, that's going to take some processing, but...

I found one hidden feature that's definitely worth calling out.

I can read someone else's feed and see what they see. That will, as Bret Taylor says, give us an easy way to show people what FF looks like to us. I'm sure itll be confusing to a lot of people, FF is a rich and complex product even though it has a very simple set of rules. Any way of discovering what its like in all its richness is worth it.

The blogger space at the DNC

Here's a quick picture of the blogger's space at the DNC, and after working here for a few minutes I ache to get back on the road. This is a far cry of the space we had at the DNC in 2004. We were in the nosebleed seats, but we had a constant view of the whole scene, the stage, the floor, and could walk around among the other press.

This year we're on the Administrative level, in a concrete bunker, flourescent lighting, and a view of nothing but TV screens. I'd do better in my office at home. I'm going to have to figure out a way to escape these confines or I'm getting on I-70 tomorrow morning and heading west.

Update -- that wasn't the blogger room. The blogger lounge is actually much nicer, softer light, couches, nerdiier looking people. I asked why bloggers get better space, no one seemed to know.

PS: This could be an interesting place for people who are here in Denver to ping each other too. Let's have a Scripting News meetup? I'm definitely up for it. I hardly know anyone here!

Last update: Monday, August 25, 2008 at 8:18 PM Pacific.

Dave Winer, 53, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.